RC Concepcion (author, NAPP Instructor, and host of “DTownTV”) goes over some tried and true steps to keep in mind when working with portraits in a studio setting. By leveraging the power of Photoshop, you'll take a great studio shoot, and move it to the next level.

From the author of

When working with images in Photoshop, there are a series of things I do. From a general correction to some specific effects, the following tips are a tried and true set of things to consider that will keep your studio images looking great.

1. Take Care When Working on a White Background

When you are working with a white background, make sure that you extend your background as high as you can get it. While it may not seem immediate to you at first, the moment that you need to pull back and make a full-size shot of a model, you may run into a situation where you have run out of background. This is exactly what has happened to me in this image shown in Figure
1. Thankfully, I can fix this in Photoshop.

Using your rectangular marquee tool, make a selection across the entire top portion of the image near where the end of your white is. Rather than trying to fill the area with white and have the colors not match correctly, click on Edit > Content Aware Scale. This will let you extend the canvas and match the tonality perfectly (see Figure
2).

This trick is also very useful when you have other elements to the left and right of the picture that you’d like to remove. As shooting in a studio will have large patches of similarly toned areas, you can just make a selection and Content Aware Scale over to hide any excess light stands and the like (see Figure
3). This will give you a more even-looking background.